<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Snickered Latchling by NullBubby</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29548431">Snickered Latchling</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/NullBubby/pseuds/NullBubby'>NullBubby</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Kirby (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dating Anxiety, First Dates, M/M, slightly obnoxious marx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 20:08:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,552</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29548431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/NullBubby/pseuds/NullBubby</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Among some decently quiet time between them, one egg finds himself in the most paradoxically unpleasant dine with his favorite clown in the world.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Magolor/Mark | Marx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Snickered Latchling</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He could be left alone, as it turned out.</p><p>He <em> could </em> be left alone, be it by mere light of a fingertip afloat or any plight else he so felt—which, as much describable as was dizzying, was farthest from the point he needed. Surely, they both <em> expected </em> it to come around, and surely, the hour was no less than pristine when considering opportunity, but with only a scant eye to the fizzling fars and luminous flux from the clouds, neither felt to even pass their glances.</p><p>Marx nearly tumbled off his seat again. With another nigh bonk of his hat, he scorched upward, stole a breath for himself, and twitched. As much as it might’ve looked he was locked into an abyss of bother, any given a first smell of his flashy hat and gorgeously nonexistent aroma would need sparsely another hint to conclude his stature was anything but. A little...  peckish, doubtless, but for the first time, he wasn’t complaining.</p><p>Of course, the edge had to have stemmed from <em> somewhere</em>, and tipped it did, Magolor concluded. His hands tremored along the tabletop, the seat his own—wherever they so chose—his eye twitched, blinked every other instant, and above else of his already frail form, his ears were doubtlessly on a path of their own. He couldn’t barely edge neglect to a hand from its sky, should he will; right then, he was already scratching his head, gazing the glorified rim between unearthly pavement and its scant lining of sunset.</p><p>“Y’know when they’re getting here?” Marx said, a spectacularly upright stature in line.</p><p>He threw his head toward his direction, blinked a good chunk of patience off, and shook. Marx mumbled to himself, resumed his contemplation to the cornering cosmos—on the opposite end of the twin galaxies, Magolor couldn’t dare break his perfect stargazing. For all the blankets passed and disputable “pranks” thrashed between them, it was no better for him than to see the same attitude pried from that peerless bowtie risen every day without misconduct, those tireless shoes that more likely hadn’t seen a second of wear than were replaced, and the tallest, most unorthodox sweet spot spiring from the tip of his tinted head. Not quite that any of it distracted from the focal eyes of his show, but it was just awfully nice always having someone so spirited around, for a change.</p><p>Marx’s face plastered back among the daydream, a burning confusion hurling for all the half instant they shared glance. Right as ever, both their slabs seemed tidy enough, trustworthy somewhere beyond the dark matter fixating the limes and the lamps fiddling away in the periphery—by the most jubilant wisps fathomable, he was taking that refuge. Still, the lined brochures lay among the silent isles beyond them both, and still, he could only whittle his thumbs until they inevitably resigned from their exploitation at boredom.</p><p>Magolor slapped his hand down—garnered another side glance, drew a weak wave—and drowned himself among the new universe of words. His ears drooped, his hands trembling. He panted to himself. Glaring the inarticulateness lining each strip of the menu, he signed every heap of blurry bore off into a trash pit as he read it all off to himself. One a dish far recognized, one a name much too accented; all told, he couldn’t make a word of what he was reading.</p><p>The ambience roared in its mellow upheaval, the tiniest tune of the stars, but already, he had two stellar bodies too many. He barely stood his menu up in time to nearly collapse into their desk, wobbling, all the way, yet all he got was another call to the cold. With a single glance to the table, he was lulled beyond the abyss he’d already caved, into the most cramped dome-shaped habitat he could barely consider less than a shadow to his limp self.</p><p>“You good over there?”</p><p>He nearly floored the table with the passing breeze, he shot up so quickly. Marx stared, plain and broad as his scant tongue always shored, though of all the calmness he could make out, only calamity sparkled.</p><p>“Yeah.” He rubbed his forehead, then sagged.</p><p>Marx didn’t even twitch. “You sure? Not to get all pushy, but you’ve said that before when you really wasn’t fine.”</p><p>His stomach babbled—he latched his eyelids. A hand drooped, the other flying for all a moment before surrendering to his own intent and dropping to the table.</p><p>“I think I could use a break, actually.”</p><p>He was let a nod and a hum of approval, though for all the adrenaline that must’ve ravaged not minutes ago, he couldn’t get himself past a struggle. With both hands, he twiddled, tried again—Marx shifted from the sidelines, though his eyes never left. To ignition, toward the light of the caves, and finally, into the exosphere, he flattened his hands against the tabletop and gasped his last. After a nod to whatever general direction of the corrupting deepness, he plunged into the murky waters, all a barely groping hand left to guide him through the dining area.</p><p>By some myriad of dumb luck, he clashed straight through the dense doorway, into the blinding light of pallor and the faint glass of himself. Through another stumbling and fumbling, he braved forward so clumsily, a zombie among the failed daylight, and bonked into the sinks, where he set his hands back down and stared the faded ground. As much as the checkers and their pawns ridiculed and goggled at him, he just wanted to throw up over himself.</p><p>For all the greatest deeds he’d managed, bothered, and tormented himself with in the past, he had a question for himself—in another blink to the haze, it faded off as the broken glass it always was. He wanted to tear up and cry, he was certain, he just wanted to shut himself in the bathroom until the nearest star exploded; he wanted nothing more than to simmer and broil, to crack and hard-boil. As much as his few fingers still writhed among him, he couldn’t bear break his form lest he spoil all his guts to the world.</p><p>...why? Why did it have to be so difficult? Years on end, it’d been the slightest deal, no greater than a grudge, if there was ever a difficulty to pinpoint—so <em> why</em>? He could argue, he could sting, he could incapacitate, he could crystallize the cavern of his subconscious, prying an answer of anything back, yet he knew it was pointless. Nothing would’ve stopped him from <em> trying</em>, but all the while he journeyed into the scalding spring, he could only wish it was the rock fossil cavern still his captor.</p><p>A swirl, a slight swish of the platform beyond, he didn’t even bother. At last, his vision was clearing, his hands were reviving—all his stomach still held on the grudge—and he gazed the motionless door. More so than ever, the outer wilderness was freezing. He was a swig from ice, himself, but for all he cared, only the refuge of the cornerless embodiment of putrefaction would glare him safe. With all its nonexistent, unminded mess, its grays and its stacks of paper towels looming from the skyward abyss, he lost himself into another stare, then shivered.</p><p>There, in the forward of an already faceless front, stood a bleak pair of eyes, relegated to forever radiation of rays and a burning pledge. With a pitiful attempt to soothe something from calamity, he dropped his face—the apparition still loomed, glowing in the shadowlight. It trialed the final instance of his live glance from beyond periphery, it scorched his last dripping eye, all righteous will left in its faceless stare alone; somewhere, he just kept groping the side of his hood.</p><p>Of course he’d done nothing to prepare. Of course he was wearing the same drabs he couldn’t <em> bear </em> take off if it meant quite likely the most blistering hour—beyond the all twenty minutes he must’ve tormented himself through already, he could only hope to imagine what the rest of the hollow night would seem. He’d been too careless with his hands, if to neglect how little he’d have ever dared consider his only acquaintance. With the suffocating sphere of lamps, fine lights, and scents, all round, the spells of all greatest dumb luck might’ve let there be some sweets available.</p><p>With a sigh, a mumble to himself, he stumbled his path back through the washroom, into the door, and out into the more abundant, melting air. By the time he’d slogged back through the passing waiters and glaring beads, his sweat must’ve been the most tangible thing on his body.</p><p>Marx slapped his menu shut. The opposite stool filled, a hardy crackle toiled from the sidelight, but neither bothered much a peep beyond their diagonals. On one side, he held the greatest glance of the spotless smoothness and barely audible patch of the inland, but already, he was dwindling his shiver supply to the extreme. Just another hair brushed against his head and he’d be wallowing in quite the finest doze to suit the finest house—and that’d be great, really.</p><p>Just...  a word. Marx sat so aimlessly, as doubtlessly expecting it so time could tell them apart, at last. Magolor was no guest, himself; if there was a cauldron to broil, he was the best candidate to seethe among the steam. Just a word, and they’d be settled. The only spine he was enduring was patience, yet all he needed was to open it, to break his own simmering sweat, and...  they’d be better.</p><p>A clear of his throat, a feigned breath to the wrong seeker—the first scrap of a pupil blew a storm, and instantly, he excused himself. Marx basked back into his gaze to the otherworld, though Magolor just soaked his own breath into his fist. The falling sunlight churned, danced around the fine-tilted flowers and succulent shrubbery behind the window panels, but all he could see was sunrise so wrong.</p><p>“Greetings, sirs.”</p><p>He jumped, slapped against his own cape for an instant, nearly falling off his seat on the bore around. A beady-eyed stump bowed behind his clipboard, staring upward from the vague territory of their table.</p><p>“I apologize profusely for the delay. Would anything satisfy for the moment?”</p><p>The waiter passed his stare a couple times before squinting, chuckling nigh inaudibly, and stepping back. While Marx contemplated, the whole universe swirling, blurring around the mere gape of his mouth, a gawk and a nudge across, he couldn’t dare defy the mixture of sickening sleet.</p><p>Marx hummed a disapproval. All eyes thumped to him, suddenly, and he followed with a shake.</p><p>“Do you hold any other concerns?”</p><p>“No,” Marx said, beyond plastering the shake of his head.</p><p>The waiter drew another bow, then reared a single step. “My best wishes to your evening.”</p><p>Magolor stared the back as long as three seconds spared him stiffness. Beyond the tan, into the faded haze of candlelit cold, he shrugged his eyelids—if only much too tight—and ran a fist over his face. He could only barely make out the haunting gaze of the twin-spiring fabrics with the regained power of sight, but he just shivered back to his ravine.</p><p>“Fancy place here, huh?”</p><p>He slipped a nod—nearly facing a choke. Marx nodded.</p><p>“Hey, uh...” He cleared his throat, and dipped his face underground. “Y’know, uh, you really didn’t need to go ahead so far with all this. I mean—this <em> is </em> nice, but...  it’s not all necessary. Not, uh, to say I don’t <em> appreciate </em> this all, because I do, but, y’know...  I’m the same guy who just lost my latest beach ball in your little traveler.”</p><p>He started a breath, a sound, a wave of something, then finally just gave up and settled with a nod. Marx shifted in his seat—a grape tipping his stem—though for all he could even tell, the sky itself was piercing them all with stalactites. Farther, in the steaming grays already lost behind the counter, a wiggle shone, and, a nearer second, somewhere among the still frail depths of endless duos for dining, darkness only continued to dwell.</p><p>He must’ve been steaming, his face was so hot. Whether he wanted to return to the bathroom for another year, stare himself to lifelessness, or contend with the overlord of darkness until he could see, he couldn’t bear tell—by the next wisp brushing his bleak blink, he couldn’t find the first glimmer away from the perfect plastered face of oblivion, staring somewhere else into the dreamscape.</p><p>Another light calling thundered them both—evidently, he was the only affected. Another curious scurry of eyes, rounding, he only begged his hands to stop flailing beneath wherever they’d been trying to reach; Marx already looked on the edge of his seat, whichever way seen.</p><p>“I’ll have the ‘Shallare’, please.”</p><p>“The <em> Challé</em>?” the waiter corrected.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah—” He suddenly stopped, shut his mouth, and slumped, slightly.</p><p>The waiter turned to him. “And you, sir?”</p><p>He squeaked. With a stumble of his hands and a fumble of his mind, he brushed the whole three or something words of the pamphlet he could recall, bumbled around the shrine of the empyrean letters and whatnot so foreign for all the single instant, and blurted his last breath. By the time his panting subsided enough to even hear his own wheezing again, he couldn’t decide if he was rather hotter or colder.</p><p>“Man,” Marx said over the falling steps and lifeless air, “what kind of people name these things, anyway?”</p><p>Magolor gulped, set his fingers to tremble along the table’s rim, and sighed a shivery breath. Just looking forward was a threat to himself, he knew fullest, but by such a piercing expressionlessness, an undeniably despisable glint over the tip of a stubby cheek, it was impossible to sit steady. He couldn’t tell what hour kept striking his head, so many times with the glee of a careful aroma dwelling; he just kept shimmering shudders over his breath and himself.</p><p>The glance readied—he knew it so well, but he couldn’t bear look away. With just a befuddled eye, Marx had him spellbound, hypnotized to searing, motionless horror. The imagined wind brushed them, thrice over, as the only recallable function left to thrive in mind, yet it, too, saw the light of outdoors to leave them a silent moment.</p><p>He raised a hand, only to be immediately immobilized by a redirected stare. He tried again, his last remaining muscle less than eager to fall against the whirlwind of the face before, but he didn’t care; he was a fruitless lump in the next second, goggling so stupidly into the only other face of the world. They didn’t dull, they didn’t gloom, they didn’t sheathe their eyes a sparing moment for themselves, they didn’t even approach the edge of variation. Beneath the starry ceiling, dazzling spectacles of hanging fixtures, and numbness among null, their faces succumbed to the spell none knew—a stiff, silent peeker against a burning, stumpy gape, his cheeks sparkling rose.</p><p>They swished aback in unison—just as the first squeaks arose. For once, he felt clean enough to see, but for what inferno raged through, what fiery whirlwind he couldn’t even recall just braved, he was lost among spells of the floral breeze.</p><p>Two enormous plates exploded over the table in another moment, yet it seemed only the least of his jumps, somehow.</p><p>“The <em> Challé Ger</em>,” the waiter said, upheaving an enormous pale mound among its glassware—caked with its own drool.</p><p>Marx jumped, murmured something, and gawked at his mountain, skipping in his seat. The entire slab slid across its stand, a good chunk of the table whelmed by its mere coming. The pallid cream dripped, dribbled looks to them both, sliming its uncomfortably shivery aura moment by moment nearer.</p><p>The next plate—a modest, fine-scented roast, bordered by an equally humble throne—plopped down aboard the other side of the already cramped table, but try as its lush aroma tingled all the right nerves, he was lost, spelunking again. He barely waved before the back reemerged, then he settled his hands the best they were willing to; one guided the other to the tip of the table in recursive flame, his afflicted drooping right past his chair, into the coldest cavern.</p><p>Marx eyed his mound of pure sugar. A deep word on his face, doubtless, he leaned, both ways laterally, then as far as he could into it without collapsing atop his tiptoe. Magolor twitched, shuddered, raised a hand to his chest as he, too, stared the intently crafted heaps and deep-minded sprinkles, then felled his fingers to each other, twiddling until the earnest dawn would inevitably settle on the face before.</p><p>“What kind of joke is ‘A-F’?”</p><p>He squeaked. With a battalion of droplets already charged through their facial station, he shied in place, and shivered, eternally. The minding of a great shock ahead, the gusts of gotten breaths, breezing vortexes by the growing jar over his face—he couldn’t tell one size of musical mellow from some ditzy getup.</p><p>“Where’s the punch in it?”</p><p>Magolor gulped his last, patted his stomach. With a few more times ridding his throat, his eyes finally blighted enough to let him see clear—yet he was nothing thankful. A cold, steely eye gazed the remainder of his life out by the moment, unrivaled in sincerity behind the sheer cliff shielding him, but he could only nudge himself until his mouth creaked into a whisper.</p><p>“There’s no joke,” Magolor mumbled, “I don’t think. That’s just...  what they write on it, I guess.”</p><p>Marx hummed; across was another blizzard sighing from its drought. The meat stared him from the subground, but Magolor couldn’t touch it. The scent resurfaced, then the cold air suddenly skipped back in notice of the opportunity, leaving him all a disastrous ice to sniff until nudging his plate a moment. His stomach grumbled again, whining him down alongside itself, but he wasn’t taking the bait; he pushed his food even farther back, all the while a creasing step unfurling in form of a side-glance.</p><p>The ghost of a grin nearly tumbled him off his seat—he barely snuck another glance to the cream tower’s side to see only a mountain’s mist. A droplet welled from the tundra, crying to him, about him, almost alongside him as he stared each trickler to the tip of its containment, then finally, he yanked his horrid meat back. As much as it smelled so irredeemably putrid, he couldn’t wait to lap his own tears and dig in.</p><p>“‘Ay,” Marx called, far more simply and quietly than ever fathomable.</p><p>Magolor shut his wells for a moment to stifle himself. A face instantly pranced back, right behind his eyelids, a merry—and, for lack of better word, charming—grin breaking the shadowlight until he could hold his breath no more, and he stared into the warm abyss.</p><p>“Y’know, I bet I could finish this whole beast in five minutes.” He hummed an inquiry. “But hmm. Might reckon there could be a little-bitty issue with that?”</p><p>He let a breath from all but his mouth. His face was among a midst of boiling, and his cheeks, the entire overcast, and the temperature were dead on scaling. He tried to open his mouth, but he paled as soon as his tongue grasped the frigid otherworld of its outside.</p><p>“Maybe, maybe.” He leaned around his ice cream so many more times, trueing spines, scalds, and reckless sickenings over Magolor’s face, but none could be told. “Maybe...  I could use a little help, hmm?”</p><p>The cream lump was nothing of assistance anymore—Marx was leaning so far his entire face spoke over his treat. There was no choice, even. There was such a smug, stupidly sunny look over him, a grin oozing among the tilt of his face, that it was impossible to just look away. Magolor couldn’t even wince if he wanted to; the forecast was a whole star, burning far too close to let a word back.</p><p>Marx just tilted, blinked a few times more; he had no choice but to nod. With an undefeated face to spare, all the way down, Marx didn’t dare scrimp his focus any moment away. As much as the spoon ahead kept glaring them both, its great, grand moment of opportune silence unrivaled, he just shivered—he shivered a while.</p><p>Marx sagged, slightly. “I can’t exactly pick some of this for myself, but oh, I wouldn’t mind at all if I was <em> forced </em> to gobble some up.”</p><p>The spoon crowed at him, even louder, despite its head sitting in the snow, the silence burned some more of his face off, nosing the very essence of his breath out into the depths of a returning face, but at last, he couldn’t take it any longer. With a great wink across the table, bits forming a burning pledge, an eternal flame hexed over himself, the time seemed just right, gazing between the looming scooper and ajar mouth aside.</p><p>For a moment, he felt about ready to pass out, he was so warm.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>"dang nabbit how dya do these romance things correctly"</p><p>Late Valentine's special oop.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>